THE government has set a target of 1,8 million hectares of maize, with approximately 1,7 million hectares already planted, Lands, Agriculture, Fisheries, Water and Rural Development secretary Obert Jiri has said.
Zimbabwe is aiming to recover from a devastating El Niño-induced drought that destroyed most of the maize crop planted during the 2023/24 agricultural season.
In a statement yesterday, Jiri said farmers had responded quite well to government's set target for maize production in the current agricultural season.
“We have encouraged our farmers to keep on planting very short season varieties for maize in the appropriate natural region,” he said.
“We will check by the end of this week to see how much has been finally planted.”
Jiri expressed optimism that the current agricultural season would help the country to battle the drought experienced last year.
“The seeded line is in a very exciting period now. The rains are with us. A lot of rains (have been received) in most areas. For traditional grains, farmers must also plant them,” he said.
“Those can still do well. At the moment, the farmers have done about 400 000 hectares of traditional grains. We think the farmers will surpass the 500 000 hectares that we want for traditional grains.
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“Even for tobacco we have already surpassed what we did in the last season. We are now on 127 000, up from 108 000 hectares.”
Jiri acknowledged the challenge faced by cotton farmers, whose crops should have been planted in October and November last year.
“The challenge is obviously on crops that should have been planted in October and November. Cotton, particularly, will be very difficult to recover in terms of hectares,” he said.
“But we keep hoping that those cotton producing areas will still be able to manage. What the farmers must do now is to really focus on the agronomics, fertiliser application and during this wet weather, they should split apply particularly their top dressing fertiliser. We encourage farmers to apply split application of fertilizers.”
The Agriculture ministry chief executive officer also revealed that government was closely monitoring the African armyworm emerging patterns to mitigate the risk of low crop yields.
Jiri said preventive measures were being taken to make sure insignificant economic losses are experienced due to pest infestation.
“It is common and it’s anticipated that the African antelope will affect us at this particular time of the year. We are aware and so we take preventive measures,” he said.
“We do not anticipate that it will get out of control because we already know the patterns and that is why the pest department is there to observe these patterns and also to really control when that happens.
“When we talk about these pests, these are things that would normally come because of a conducive atmosphere or environment that would have been created.”
Jiri also called on farmers to act promptly before pest populations reach critical levels, encouraging them to use appropriate methods to apply pesticides effectively.
“Farmers must really be on the lookout. Before the pests reach economic thresholds, we must be able to control them,” he said”
Government recently announced that it would provide chemicals to farmers to control African armyworm free of charge.
